Welcome to Healthy Living Week at OnMilwaukee.com! The resolutions are made, now the real work begins. But we're here to help get you – and keep you – on track with stories about medicine, diet, exercise, spiritual and emotional health, and more. Healthy Living Week is brought to you by Pairdd: easy gluten-free cooking at your fingertips.

More and more people are choosing a gluten-free diet for a variety of reasons. For many, it has made a huge improvement in their lives, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come with its share of struggles.

This week, OnMilwaukee.com asked those on a gluten-free diet in the Social Circle to share what is the most challenging aspect of it. Feel free to add your own thoughts via the Talkback feature. 

Kay Ehlers: "Watching other people continue to eat gluten when you think they would be healthier if they stopped. Also, getting mocked for being gluten-free and being told it's a fad diet."

Abigal Fowler: "Pizza."

Lisa Gatewood: "For the most part it was a much easier transition than I anticipated. But I have to plan my meals in advance now. Very few on-the-go food options. If I don't go to the store and pick up things for meals I'll end up going hungry or eating Chex cereal for dinner."

Steven Hawley: "I think being gluten-free is really easy actually. Though I've never been a big fan of bread to begin with. But there are so many substitute recipes and products it’s ridiculous. You can still eat potatoes, rice. Being gluten-free is a cakewalk – no pun intended. It's going sugar- and/or grain-free that's a huge challenge, in my opinion."

Kristin Hoeper: "A gluten-free diet is definitely not a fad! My kids have autism and a gluten-free diet worked wonders for their concentration and language."

Shannon Knapp: "Everything."

Alida LaCosse: "Changing the way I think about food."

Stacy La Point: "There are no good gluten-free bagels, I don't care what anyone says."

Allen Laird: "It's more difficult to grab a quick meal that isn't planned."

Valery Jean Mayer: "The hardest part is actually being able to separate the gluten-free work space and equipment from the area that wheat is used in as well as finding products that are not four times the price of wheat based."

Al Oldham: "The hardest part about being gluten-free is not being gluten-free and having to listen to people who are gluten-free talk about it as if they discovered the cure for cancer."

JoAnn Reidl: "Beer!"

Amanda Rose: "Realizing that substituting gluten-free baked items are nearly as bad for you."

Amy Schneider: "Having to watch your child cry because they can't have cake at a birthday party, or have the snacks or pizza that everyone else is eating all around him. It is heartbreaking."

Jen Skladanek: "Eating that crummy bread or giving it up altogether."

Jeanne Marie Spicuzza: "Since very few people are gluten intolerant, or even gluten sensitive, I would say that the hardest / worst part of going gluten-free can be that doing so does not address a more likely source problem, which is digestive, possibly due to vitamin deficiency, improper food combining, too many processed foods, allopathic prescriptive or synthetic chemical side effect, refined sugars, etc."

Mike Torch: "No Twinkies."

Steve Whitlow: "The hardest part is finding a loving partner who has a sweet part-time job and allows them to coordinate all of the menus and grocery shopping."